Restaurant Management

Behind the Pass

The Business of Running a Restaurant, from Food Cost to Front of House to Staying Open

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A free, open textbook for aspiring restaurant owners, culinary graduates who know food but not business, working managers going for the next job, hospitality students, food-truck and bar and catering operators, and anyone who has ever stood in a room and thought: this could be a restaurant.

License. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0). You are free to share and adapt it, including commercially, with attribution and under the same license.

Edition. First edition, 2026.

A note before you begin. This book is educational material, not professional advice. Health codes, employment law, liquor licensing, lease practice, and lending terms vary by country, state, county, and city — and they change. Every financial figure, cost card, lease term, and business plan in these pages is an illustrative teaching example, not a projection of any real business. Before you sign a lease, hire an employee, price a menu, apply for a license, or borrow money, consult an attorney, an accountant, and an insurance professional licensed where you operate. The book will teach you what questions to ask them. It cannot answer them for you.